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To read more about Episode 252, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:00:14] Hello, everyone. This is Rumble with Michael Moore and I am Michael Moore. Good to talk to you all again. I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. I thought I’d take a couple of weeks off. It’s August. I wish I could say that I went on a vacation somewhere. I did not do that. Instead, I thought I’d take some time to just chill and make some plans here for the fall in the winter — specifically, being involved as I am, helping different people around the country with the election coming up in November and figuring out what’s the best way I can make my contribution. I’m not going to get into that too much right now, but that’s what I did on my summer vacation. So, I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. And I thought, what I’d do — I don’t know, this is probably because I went to Catholic school and so there is a little bit of guilt attached to this, you know, “you haven’t been doing your podcast. You haven’t been doing your Substack here for the last couple of weeks or so.” So I feel like I have to do make up work, not that I have to, but there’s so many things I’ve been wanting to say about what’s been going on in the last couple of weeks. So I’ll probably do another one or two here in the next couple of days just to catch up. And then I’ve got some writing I want to do, and I want to share that with you too, on my Substack. For all of you who receive this via Substack, Substack you know is this great platform where it’s free for people to use. You can start your own blog or your own podcast and send it out to people via Substack. That’s what I’ve been doing now for — I think it was about a year ago this week. There’s no paywall. It’s all free. Whether it’s a podcast or anything I do online here, my column, my weekly letter, I want everybody to have access to it and I want you to share it with other people. And most of you are free subscribers. For all of you who’ve been on my mailing list for years, you automatically became part of the free Substack movement here. If you want to be a paid subscriber, you’re welcome to do that. It’s really only if you are able to do that. It’s five bucks a month and you get a couple of months for free if you have it for the year. You’re just getting the same free podcast in the same free column that I post on Substack, so only give if you want to just support our work. If not, no worries. You stay on as a free subscriber. 

[00:02:39] Thank you, all of you, who’ve been with me this first year. I’ve really enjoyed doing this. When I just want to do nothing than just relax, that’s what I do. I just get on the computer or the keyboard there, wherever I am, and I just start writing. In some ways, it’s maybe a blessing and a curse. I’m lucky that I’m able to do that and that I enjoy it. And it’s also, if any of you are writers or you’ve tried writing or whatever, you know that writing is also… It stimulates the self-loathing in all of us, because as soon as you write that first sentence or that first paragraph or page or whatever, and if you make the mistake of stopping to read it instead of just kind of barreling through and get out what you want to say, and then you can go back and, you know, do rewrites, but if you stop and you read it right away like, “Oh, this sucks, I can’t stand this!” And then you hit the delete button and there it goes. It’s gone. In the old days with typewriters, you’d rip the page out of the typewriter — “Ah, I can’t stand this!” Then you’d wad it up and you’d hoop it into the wastebasket. But you’d still have the written thing that you wrote if you wanted to go back to it and you thought, “you know, I did have a good idea earlier today,” and  you go back, and you pull it out of the wastebasket, it’s still there. If you hit the delete button and you don’t have, you know, a mechanism or whatever on your computer that saves even your deleted stuff — and of course, a lot of programs now and computers obviously are able to do that, but I’ve tried to not get in the habit of just destroying something I’ve just written simply because in that exact moment, maybe I didn’t like it. But that’s not to say you won’t like it a couple of hours later. Anyways, I enjoy doing this. I enjoy talking to you on this podcast and I love hearing from you. So anytime you want to write me, you can do that at Mike@MichaelMoore.com. And I read all my emails. Do not have time to answer them sadly, I’m sorry, but I do want you to know that I love your feedback, I love your ideas. And so if you want to write me, you can at Mike@MichaelMoore.com or there’s a link here on the podcast site that you’re listening to this on, the link to send me a voicemail. You can record a one minute voicemail and I love to hear those. And sometimes I read the mail, or play the mail here on the podcast so I can share your feedback with others so just know that that might happen. But it’s been good for me to connect with you in this way and to be able to share my thoughts with you in terms of, you know, what’s happening in the world, and what I think we should do about it. I’m somewhat of an optimist, not just to be optimistic for optimistic sake — I don’t think that’s good. I’m not a big believer in trying to get to a place of hope just to feel hope. Feeling hope is not actual hope. Real hope is a belief that you and I, others, we can do something and we could see what things will look like when we do those things. And I hope it’s good for you. I hope that maybe I’ve give you an idea or two and encouraged you to be involved. 

Michael Moore [00:05:51] So before I continue, though, I want to just take a moment here and thank her underwriters for helping to sponsor this week’s episode of Rumble. First off, a huge thanks to Moink. That’s moo plus oink, Moink. Now I know not all of my Rumble listeners eat meat and bless you for that. But for those that do, Moink is a meat subscription company — meat subscribtion? Yes you subscribe to meat. What a cool idea. And it’s making a big difference, especially helping small American family farms become financially independent from Big Agriculture. Moink delivers grass fed beef and lamb plus pastured pork — that’s right, letting the pigs run free in the pasture and chickens, same thing for chicken — and sustainable, wild caught Alaskan salmon. And they send it direct to your door. And all of it is sourced from those small American family farms, not some big corporate farm. And the best part is the animals are raised outdoors on grass with no growth hormones, or antibiotics. They’re not confined in cages and buildings. It’s just good old fashioned farming methods. So keep American family farming going by signing up at MoinkBox.com/rumble. So it’s MoinkBox.com/rumble. Do that right now and if you do listeners of this podcast, get a free filet mignon in every order for a year. MoinkBox.com/rumble. That’s one full year of the best filet mignon that you’ll ever taste, but it’s only for a limited time. So let me spell this out for you: MoinkBox.com/rumble. And thank you to Moink for supporting this podcast and for supporting my voice being heard by the millions who have downloaded Rumble over these first couple plus years. 

[00:08:06] I also want to thank Stamps.com for their long time support of Rumble with Michael Moore. Many of you have heard me talk about Stamps.com before. We use them when we’re on the road for traveling or making our movies, whatever. It’s convenient. We have it with us. We don’t have to abide by the hours of any place where we have to be. We just box, stamp and ship. Now, if you haven’t tried this before, you go to Stamps.com —  it’s basically like having really your like your own personal 24/7 post office that you can access from anywhere. All you need is your regular computer and a printer, no special supplies or equipment, and you’re up and running in minutes printing official postage for any letter, any package, anywhere you want to send it. You can even order shipping supplies through Stamps.com, including free priority mail envelopes and boxes. Plus, and this is the best part, my friends, you get discounts that you can’t find anywhere else, like up to 30% off the United States Postal Service rates and 86% off United Parcel Service, UPS. So don’t mail and ship the hard way. Sign up with Stamps.com today. Sign up with a promo code MOORE for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments for any of this. No long term contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the little microphone at the top of the page and enter the code MOORE. And thank you, Stamps.com, for continuing to support this podcast. 

[00:09:53] And finally, this podcast is also sponsored by BetterHelp. When life gets stressful, it helps to talk to someone about it. I don’t need to tell you that, we all know this after going through these last few years, because without that outlet, that outlet to be able to talk out what’s going on in your life, the day to day stresses can fester and grow until you suddenly feel that you’re completely overwhelmed or burned out. BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy, and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. And you, my Rumble listeners, you get 10% off your first month, at BetterHelp.com/rumble. So let me give you that address again: BetterHelp.com/rumble. Do that and you get 10% off your first month. My thanks to BetterHelp for supporting this podcast and supporting my voice and for being there to help those in need right now. Thank you very much for the work you do.

Michael Moore [00:11:27] I’m glad for the summer. And I know this has been a rough summer weather-wise. Nothing new. And August — I love August, too. It does feel kind of like a month where you can just maybe take a couple of weeks off from doing the podcasts or sit outside, go for a walk, look up some old friends you haven’t spoken to in a while. Here’s what August, though, is not for: school. Now obviously I love school. I loved it when I was in school. I’m a big believer in school education, etc., etc.. But why do we send kids back to school now in August? I mean, this has been going on for a number of years. It started with just a little slow creep. Do you remember when there was no school until after Labor Day? The first time you were in school was maybe the day after Labor Day or the week after Labor Day. Part of it was, I’m guessing back in the day, there certainly wasn’t air conditioning or whatever, and then if you live in certain climates, it’s pretty hot in a classroom in the summer. And so, you know, you went to school in the fall. I’m sure there’s other reasons, too. They needed the child labor to harvest the crops or whatever back in the day. But now school is starting the first or second week of August. By the third week, it seems like most people I know that have kids in school, the kids are in school. I’m thinking, “it’s the summer.” What happened to the summer being for the kids? Having the whole summer off. Why are they in school? How are they able to learn and when it’s August outside? They look out the windows in schools, you know, the kids can see that this is like maybe the nicest month of the year — what am I doing sitting at a desk? 

[00:13:24] Now I know, look, we’ve been going through this pandemic here and kids — they’ve had it rough. Frankly, I feel bad for kids who’ve had two or three years of their education disrupted. I feel bad for the teachers who have tried to do the virtual teaching from their own kitchen table. None of this has been good on a number of levels. Not good for learning, not good for kids growing up, learning to socialize, work and play well with others, all that stuff. So now we’re trying to get everybody back to school and the schools are all open. But why are they open in August? I don’t understand. Am I the only one that feels like that? Nah I can’t be the only? First of all, if you’re a kid and you’re listening to this, I know you’re with me on this, right? You did not want to go back to school on August 15th, right? And I’m sure a lot of you, most of you hopefully, love school. You like learning, you like reading new books and learning to do new things. It’s just not right. It’s just not right. Do you ever — I’ve talked about this before, I keep this little list like if I ever am president of the United States, and honestly I don’t know how that would happen because first of all, I’d have to run and I’m not prone to do that. And then people would have to vote for me and God knows what that would look like. But one of the things on my list is that there’s no school before Labor Day. That should just be a law or a presidential order or something. Speaking of presidential orders and school, though, I’m recording this right now just a few hours after President Biden got out his presidential pen and signed an order saying that if you’ve got student loan debt, if you got it from a Pell Grant, he just wiped away $20,000 of your debt just like that. You don’t have to pay it and if you just got a regular loan, $10,000 got wiped away today. Now I know a lot of you owe $30, $40, $70, $100,000 in student loans and I’ll talk about that in a second, but the way this works, according to his order today, is that if you earn less than $125,000, and I’m sure that’s most people, $10,000 of your student debt was just eliminated today. And if again, if the debt was from a Pell Grant, $20,000 is gone. And I just saw the statistics. That means, first of all, there’s 45 million, a minimum of 45 million Americans carrying the student debt. That’s a lot of people. And so of that 45 million, 20 million of them today by the stroke of Biden’s pen had their entire college debt wiped away. No longer owe it. Boom. Gone just like that. 20 million people who at the beginning of this day were, you know, up to, say, $20,000 in debt with student loans with these Pell grants — gone. No longer in debt. Going to bed tonight debt free when it comes to the student loans. I mean, that’s amazing. Now I am going to share my criticisms about this, but they’re not criticisms of the fact that the president just cleared away the debt of 20 million people, mostly people who are poor, the working poor, the working class are no longer saddled with this debt. And the others, those who make up to $125,000 a year, got $10,000 removed. I mean, I know you’re saying to yourself, “hey, I still got another $50,000 I got to pay.” But man, $10,000 is $10,000, right? I mean, look, as you know, I was campaigning out there with Bernie a couple of years ago at this time. And Bernie and I and all my friends, we are in favor of you going to college for free. You should not be paying for this. Back when we were your age, if you’re a college student, in many states, most states, college was either free or nearly free. And you weren’t supposed to be in debt for the next 20 years of your life. If you lived in California, you could go to any U.C. School —Berkeley, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Davis, any of the U.C. schools — free. Free tuition. Free. Berkeley, free. I think the same thing is true of the New York schools, the SUNY schools, State University of New York, all those schools from near and around New York City up to Buffalo — free. And in places like Michigan, you know, if you went to Central Michigan University, Michigan State University, geez I don’t think it was maybe a grand a year? Maybe, if that, right? Somebody will write me and say, “No, I went to Ann Arbor for $750 a year.”. 

[00:19:12] Now I’m laughing, but it’s not funny because if you’re a college student right now listening to this you’re thinking, “what the hell?” Why did we as parents, parents and grandparents now, allow a system to take place to where you have to be in hoc here for a decade or two or three? Why did we let this happen to our own young people? And then you got to get out of college right away, get a job, any job sometimes, maybe a job you don’t want, you don’t like but you got to start paying back those loans. What’s that supposed to be? Your first lesson as an adult? That, “you’re going to be in debt, kid. Your whole life in fact. You never get to own your home. You’re going to be in debt. You gotta buy that car. You’re going to do this, that, whatever.” What’s the point if we are the richest country on earth and if we are able to do at least a few good things for our fellow citizens — how about being able to go to college, be one of those things? And Biden sort of believes that, too. But, of course, he’s not Bernie. And he’s not a progressive in that sense. But he took a step today that the old Biden wouldn’t when he was the young Biden. I mean, he wouldn’t have supported this sort of thing. But he has come along in his years and he knows, he’s you know, I mean, he’s in the final quarter of his life. I think that he cares about how he’s remembered. And I think he’s been doing some things that at least appear to be a good thing. This is more than appearance, this 20 million, I’ll say it again, 20 million people, especially low income people who were in serious debt, up to $20,000 of college debt go to bed tonight debt free from their college loans. Wow. And then another 27 million, I think, get at least the $10,000 wiped away. 

Michael Moore [00:21:22] So, you know, I just wanted to say thanks and say to the president how much I appreciate this and encourage people to remind people that this is what happens if you got not Trump in office, not Bush, not, you know, people who are there at the behest and only the behest of our major corporations and Wall Street, whatever. Some good things can happen. It doesn’t mean the Democrats aren’t also there at the behest of these corporations and Wall Street and their big donors, who are oftentimes the same donors who are giving to the Republicans. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I wanted to just start with the positive thing I wanted to say about what Biden did today for a lot of people in this country and of course, the Republicans are screaming. Mitch McConnell this afternoon, he called the debt relief ‘a slap in the face.” To who? Or whom? I know I should have finished college and I’d know if it was who or whom. 

Speaker 2 [00:22:36] But what’s a slap in the face? Slap in the face? I mean, the banks are going to get their money paid back by the United States government. The schools aren’t required to lower their tuition rates. You know? So who really is the slap — what a stupid thing to say. You know, less than 80 days away from the election, the midterm election, and here, tens of millions of Americans got huge relief today. Got it. Made it better for their families. “Oh, no. Inflation’s going to go up now. He just poured gasoline on the fire.” What do you mean? Wait a minute. So you’re telling me if somebody knocked on my door and said that suddenly I don’t owe whoever $10,000, that I can just keep the money — what do you think people are going to do when the debt is wiped clean and they haven’t been able to do things, they haven’t been able to afford things because they’re carrying all this debt? Then the debt is gone — what do you think they’re going to do? Tell me how the economy is going to work? I’m going to guess that that Friday night dinner they used to like to go out on with their spouse or partner or friends or whatever, I think they might go to dinner this Friday and spend money into the economy. Maybe. You know, maybe they won’t get an eviction notice from the landlord this month. Maybe — I mean, go down the whole list of things if you suddenly weren’t $20,000 in debt. You know that car that’s ten years old, you know, maybe you can afford to get a five year old car. What are they talking about criticizing this? I mean, legitimate criticism today came from Derrick Johnson, the head of the NAACP and other progressives and including now myself when I say this, is that is a Band-Aid. It’s a good Band-Aid — anybody who’s suddenly $20,000 debt free tonight, man. I’m not going to put that down. And I’m glad that my money goes for this. And when the anchor on CNN today asked the Democrat, “where is the money? Where’s the money coming from to pay for this?” Well, we’re going to raise your taxes and other rich people’s taxes. That’s one thing. But really, where it’s coming from is that — here’s actually this is what I want to ask: why don’t I ever when I’m watching the news, ever hear the question asked of a politician, “where are you getting the money to pay for $1,000,000,000,000 military? I mean, why are you spending so much on the Pentagon?”. 

[00:25:44] Never hear that question, do you? Or any of the other things — “where are you getting the money to give the rich the the multi trillion dollar tax break?” Never asked. Never ask it about any of those things, but when it comes to education, “oh, yeah. How are we paying for this?” The question really is why are our young people being forced to pay anything at all for something that betters our society? It doesn’t mean everybody has to go to college. You know, I went for a year, but we also know that a more educated society — it isn’t just about well you’re going to be able to earn more money or whatever, it’s that if you have a knowledgeable populace, if you have a smart electorate, voters, they’re not going to be swayed by charlatans who tell them such easy lies. They’re going to question it. They’re going to have a critical thinking button in their heads because they’ve read books, because they’ve sat in classes and debated issues, because they’ve been exposed to art, film, etc. They’re going to wonder. And that wonderment is going to lead to a better country. This is something that should be and is encouraged in so many other countries where college is free. France, free. Most of Scandinavia, free. Germany, it’s either free or mostly free — and virtually all of these European countries. I mean, they have to pay room and board or they have to pay for books or they have some registration fees or things like that. But man, you know, why do we do this to the kids that we’ve just raised? They’re just becoming adults. It’s like a punishment almost. It has to stop. And I just wanted to say that as I’ve returned from my two weeks of not working, that I don’t think 8-year–olds or 16-year-olds should be sitting in a classroom in their school here in August. And when they get out of school, I think they should be able to continue their education. And I’m more than happy to pay for it with my tax dollars. 

[00:28:29] President Biden and other Democrats who are more moderate, I ask you to really think about this. Let’s join the rest of the civilized industrial world and not put our young people into immediate debt as they become adults. That’s not the way to start their lives. Let’s make college — let’s get there, let’s make college free. Let’s forgive all of these loans. We can take it. We have the money. Start taxing the rich the way they used to be taxed and should be taxed and we’ll be fine. 

Michael Moore [00:29:20] So that’s it for today’s episode of Rumble. I’m glad to be back. I’m glad you’re back. If you didn’t go anywhere, I hope you get to go somewhere sometime soon. Thanks to my producer and editor, Angela Vargos. And thanks to all of you for being participants in this. And thanks for this great first year on Substack, and all the people at Substack who have created this platform that we could all use free of charge. It’s incredible. And I’m sorry to all the kids who are having to get up and go to school in the morning here in 95-degree weather. But again, remember, when I’m president, no school till after Labor Day — just put that on that whole list of things I want to do once I’m in office. All right. Thanks, everybody. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. This is Michael Moore and this is Rumble.